Responses
NITHYASREE MAHADEVAN
Ariyakkudi’s kutcheri format must have caused eyebrows to be raised in his time. Yesteryear stalwarts brought changes and innovations within the lakshman rekha of tradition. Madurai Mani Iyer’s English Note, G.N.Balasubramainain’s focus on ragas like Andolika and Malavi, the gramophone records of devotional songs by MS, DKP and MLV all belong to this category, binding the artiste and the audience.
With concerts shrinking from four hours to two, and the circuit widening from Tiruvaiyaru to north America and Australia, the artist has to deal with different demands in sabha, temple, wedding and overseas kutcheris. We must not bend down too much but strive to bring listeners to our level in this endless journey of self discovery. From those who want only rakti ragas to tukkada lovers, rasikas too come with different expectations.
Carnatic music demands total concentration and involvement on the listeners side. Like the artist, the rasika also grows with time and experience. As they get familiar with the art form they digest more and more intricacies. Anything presented in the right format with sruti suddham will go down with any audience. The duty of musicians is to uphold the purity of Carnatic music while indulging in innovation, creativity and popular appeal.
T.M. KRISHNA
Let me play the devil’s advocate. Are we totally obsessed with past? As if the great musicians of a golden past understood the problem perfectly, and knew all the answers? And we are lowly human beings trying to reflect on that past and making compromises?
Our examples of uncompromising musicians is always of those who didn’t get 200 people in the audience. The examples given were of M.D. Ramanathan and Brindamma. So, in common parlance they have to be unpopular. Are we making a mistake there?
Music was the result of society and society decided music is also a path towards the divine. Through the bhakti movement we had a social renaissance that made music primarily a vehicle of salvation. In Carnatic music the need to understand the import of bhakti, religion and bhava is definitely an issue, the import of the lyrics being “divine.”
It follows that an atheist cannot be a Carnatic musician. You have to believe in God before you start singing. I don’t agree with that. There is divinity in music itself. The divinity of Bhairavi, Khamboji, Thodi, is far more important for me as a Carnatic musician than Tyagaraja or Rama. The import in Tyagaraja’s compositions is his personal experience as a human being. If he has made it inhere in the song then I believe that getting lost in his Thodi is also getting lost in his lyric.
What happens when we sing a padam. Do we want to go into the soul of the composer? In fact when we come to a sringara composition people will tell you please don’t understand the meaning, but you know that Bhairavi comes alive in ‘Rama rama prana sakhi.’
I take great offence at the idea of “lowly cutcheri.” You are lowering yourself when you make a statement like that. What’s lowly about a concert? The kutcheri by itself is not pandering to people. It is my experience. The audience comes to experience my experience on the stage. I disagree with Tansen. The moment you try to please someone, god or king, there’s something wrong, an externality enters — doesn’t matter coca cola or Rama. But when the experience is internal, it begins and ends there.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Music Season
